Gerry Murphy

Gerry Murphy Poems

Gerry Murphy Biography

Gerry Murphy was born in Cork in 1952. After dropping out of university in the early 1970s he spent some years working in London and living in an Israeli Kibbutz before returning to Cork where he has remained ever since. A champion swimmer he has made his living primarily as a life guard and swimming pool manager. He began publishing his books in the mid-80s containing poems so far removed from the Irish tradition that many doubted they were poems at all. Undaunted and with his usual irreverence, Murphy once insisted on using a singularly detracting review alongside the more praising ones as a blurb for one of his books. Amusingly this had the effect of silencing and defusing many of his critics.)

The Best Poem Of Gerry Murphy

Long Summer Afternoon

(for Gráinne)

As you sleep,
your tanned pelt
glowing against lemon sheets,
a warm southern wind
whips a sprinkling of rain
through the open window:
A blind cartographer
mapping you with kisses.


In the name of memory,
I claim that quicksilver
trickle of sweat;
its sinuous track
down into the small
of your back;
its slight tickling
at the top
of your buttocks;
its happy drip
into fragrant darkness.


Three days,
two showers later,
your smell fades
from my skin
and I submerge without trace
in the grubby quotidian.
Then, one morning,
several weeks after,
I pull on my grey sweater -
the very one you pressed
into service as a nightgown -
and suddenly inhale you
all over again.

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